Teen complains about lack of mental health help, despite paying $35,000 for Aurora rehab

Editor’s note: This article makes a reference to suicidal ideation. The Suicide Prevention Lifeline of Canada is available 24 hours a day at 1-833-456-4566.

Ava’s mental health struggles began at an early age.

Ava, whose last name has been withheld for privacy, said she has suffered from anxiety since she was eight and depression since she was 12.

A bright student with near-perfect grades, Ava’s father John said her mental health issues came to a head during her high school years, when she started using cannabis and vaping nicotine.

“It’s basically just a redundant circle of you getting depressed, the more you use,” Ava said.

Around the age of 16, he began to show symptoms of borderline personality disorder.

“We needed a little extra help, the therapy wasn’t helping us at all,” John said. “There are so many kids who need it and so little to help, so it takes so long that it sucks.”

Ava said that almost “every teenager” she has spoken to has said that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have had a negative impact on their mental health, describing it as “a trauma for everyone”.

“Everybody was at home, so a lot of us teenagers don’t know how to interact with people or we don’t have any social conception of how to interact with people, because we were locked in our homes for two years,” he said. “Our freshman year of high school, when we were supposed to go out and meet people, we were separated, we couldn’t talk to each other, we had to wear masks and stay six feet away from each other.”

“Even (for) tons of adults, it took a lot, so it took a lot for teenagers,” he added.

Father and daughter turn to a $35,000 Aurora rehab facility

Desperate for help, Ava and her father turned to the Aurora-based Freedom From Addiction rehab center, where Ava was admitted last April to help her deal with an addiction to cannabis.

But just over two weeks into her 60-day stay, Ava was sent to Southlake Regional Health Center’s psychiatric intensive care unit after she began showing signs of suicidal ideation.

When Ava, who lives with her parents at their home in Oshawa, was told an ambulance was coming, she said she didn’t want to leave the facility.

Later that night after being discharged, Ava and John returned but without the hospital discharge papers. The couple said staff at the Aurora facility refused to readmit her without them.

Now months later, after a series of back-and-forths, Ava has not returned to the center, while John is being paid $35,000.

“We’re totally at our wits’ end now,” said John. “Ava doesn’t want to come back, we don’t want her to come back now, we don’t trust the place…she doesn’t trust anyone.”

Speaking to AuroraToday, Freedom From Addiction co-founder Franco Lupo said that while he can’t talk about specific cases, the accredited center has been operating for 13 years and has helped many clients with their recovery.

“I stand behind the work we do, we all love what we do, there wouldn’t be anyone working there who isn’t passionate about recovery and helping people,” he said.

Problems with the system

The costly experience is just the latest in a series of frustrating encounters with the province’s mental health care system, which John said is “overburdened” while Ava described it as “understaffed of staff and “unproductive”.

“It costs a lot of money to get the right help you need,” he said. “It’s not a very productive system.”

“I’ve been to the psych ward many times and they never help me.”

Ava said while the province has “free” health care, free health care resources are difficult to access. John said demand means there are long waits to access various programs, while payment options are piling up quickly.

“We wanted Ava to have a psychological evaluation, if we had waited and not done it on our own and paid the $4,000 to do it, we would have waited three, four, five years. That might have been too late and we might have lost Ava,” John said.

“It took us a while to get on the wagon and then you get therapy for her, and your coverage only covers $800 to $1,500, but she needs intensive, every week, sometimes twice a week, and that’s like $200 , $250 a pop,” he added. “Sooner or later it runs out and you’re just trying to get it out of your pocket. And that’s just for a regular psychotherapist. Not a psychiatrist, not a psychologist.”

Ava said that while free and easily accessible resources like mental helplines can be “comforting,” they don’t offer long-term support.

A survey of more than 10,000 Ontario students, released last month by the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, found that 38 per cent of students rate their mental health as fair or poor, while a similar number (37%) reported experiencing high levels of stress.

A third of students said they thought they needed mental health support from a professional in the past year, but didn’t seek it, the survey added. The most common reasons cited for not seeking help are thinking they could handle it themselves, being afraid of what others think of them and being ‘too busy’.

In the most recent provincial budget, there was an additional $396 million over three years to improve access and expand existing mental health and addictions services and programs.

“Under Premier Ford’s leadership, our government is making record investments in the health and well-being of our children and young people, now and for the future,” Deputy First Minister and Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in a press release. “This investment will connect more children and young people with mental health care closer to home that supports them and includes their individual needs.”